Newsletter:
Vol. 5. Iss. 1
8 October2003
A Failed Israeli Society is
Collapsing
The End of Zionism?
Avraham Burg
The Zionist revolution has always rested on two pillars: a just
path and an ethical leadership. Neither of these is operative any longer.
The Israeli nation today rests on a scaffolding of corruption, and on foundations
of oppression and injustice. As such, the end of the Zionist enterprise is
already on our doorstep. There is a real chance that ours will be the last
Zionist generation. There may yet be a Jewish state in the Middle East, but
it will be a different sort, strange and ugly.
There is time to change course, but not much. What is needed
is a new vision of a just society and the political will to implement it.
Nor is this merely an internal Israeli affair. Diaspora Jews for whom Israel
is a central pillar of their identity must pay heed and speak out. If the
pillar collapses, the upper floors will come crashing down.
The Israeli opposition does not exist, and the coalition government,
with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon at its head, claims the right to remain silent.
In a nation of chatterboxes, everyone has suddenly fallen dumb, because there's
nothing left to say. We live in a thunderously failed reality.
Yes, we Israelis have revived the Hebrew language, created a
marvelous theater and a strong national currency. Our Jewish minds are as
sharp as ever. We are traded on the Nasdaq. But is this why we created a state?
The Jewish people did not survive for two millennia in order to pioneer new
weaponry, computer security programs or antimissile missiles. We were supposed
to be a light unto the nations. In this we have failed.
It turns out that the 2000-year struggle for Jewish survival
comes down to a state of settlements, run by an amoral clique of corrupt lawbreakers
who are deaf both to their citizens and to their enemies. A state lacking
justice cannot survive. More and more Israelis are coming to understand this
as they ask their children where they expect to live in 25 years. Children
who are honest admit, to their parents’ shock, that they do not know. The
countdown to the end of Israeli society has begun.
It is very comfortable to be a Zionist in West Bank settlements
such as Beit El and Ofra. The biblical landscape is charming. From the window
you can gaze through the geraniums and bougainvillea and not see the occupation.
Traveling on the fast highway that takes you from Ramot on Jerusalem’s northern
edge to Gilo on the southern edge, a 12-minute trip just west of the Palestinian
roadblocks, it's hard to comprehend the humiliating experience of the despised
Arab who must creep for hours along the pocked, blockaded roads assigned to
him. One road for the occupier, one road for the occupied.
This cannot work. Even if the Arabs lower their heads and swallow
their shame and anger forever, it won't work. A structure built on human callousness
will inevitably collapse in on itself. Note this moment well: Zionism's superstructure
is already collapsing like a cheap Jerusalem wedding hall. Only madmen continue
dancing on the top floor while the pillars below are collapsing.
Israel, having ceased to care about the children of the Palestinians,
should not be surprised when they come washed in hatred and blow themselves
up in the centers of Israeli escapism. They consign themselves to Allah in
our places of recreation, because their own lives are torture. They spill
their own blood in our restaurants in order to ruin our appetites, because
they have children and parents at home who are hungry and humiliated.
We could kill a thousand ringleaders and engineers a day and
nothing will be solved, because the leaders come up from below - from the
wells of hatred and anger, from the “infrastructures” of injustice and moral
corruption.
If all this were inevitable, divinely ordained and immutable,
I would be silent. But things could be different, and so crying out is a moral
imperative.
Here is what the prime minister should say to the people:
The time for illusions is over. The time for decisions has arrived.
We love the entire land of our forefathers and in some other time we would
have wanted to live here alone. But that will not happen. The Arabs, too,
have dreams and needs.
Between the Jordan and the Mediterranean there is no longer
a clear Jewish majority. And so, fellow citizens, it is not possible to keep
the whole thing without paying a price. We cannot keep a Palestinian majority
under an Israeli boot and at the same time think ourselves the only democracy
in the Middle East. There cannot be democracy without equal rights for all
who live here, Arab as well as Jew. We cannot keep the territories and preserve
a Jewish majority in the world's only Jewish state - not by means that are
humane and moral and Jewish.
